A Spanish court has dropped its investigation into three senior officials of Equatorial Guinea, including the president’s son, over allegations of kidnapping and torturing opposition activists.
The High Court said on Tuesday that it was ending the case because Equatorial Guinea’s Supreme Court of Justice was conducting its probe into the matter, according to court documents.
The decision was met with dismay by human rights groups, who accused Spain of turning a blind eye to the abuses committed by the regime of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has ruled the oil-rich former Spanish colony for 44 years.
The case was brought by the Movement for the Liberation of Equatorial Guinea Third Republic (MLGE3R), a Spain-based opposition group, in 2020. It claimed that four of its members, two of whom had Spanish citizenship, were kidnapped in South Sudan in 2019 and flown to Equatorial Guinea on a government plane, where they were tortured and held incommunicado.
One of them, Julio Obama, died in prison last year. The group also alleged that they were surveilled and harassed on Spanish soil by agents of the Equatorial Guinea government.
The defendants were Carmelo Ovono Obiang, the president’s son and minister of defense; Antonio Mba Nguema, the president’s brother and former defense minister; and Manuel Nguema Mba, the head of national security.
The Equatorial Guinea government has denied the allegations as false and accused the MLGE3R of being involved in a failed coup attempt in 2017.
The High Court judge, Santiago Pedraz, said he could not assess “whether those proceedings [in Equatorial Guinea] might suffer from a lack of impartiality”. He also found no evidence that the victims were coerced into traveling to South Sudan or that they were under surveillance in Spain.
Amnesty International said the ruling was “a missed opportunity to bring justice to the victims of grave human rights violations in Equatorial Guinea”.
“Spain must investigate and prosecute crimes under international law, regardless of where they were committed or by whom,” said Marta Colomer, Amnesty’s deputy director for West and Central Africa.
She also expressed concern that the three surviving victims were still detained in Equatorial Guinea without access to their families or lawyers and that Obama’s family had not been able to recover his body.
She called for a “prompt, transparent, and independent investigation” into the matter by the Equatorial Guinean authorities.
Equatorial Guinea is one of Africa’s most repressive and corrupt countries, where the president and his family enjoy lavish lifestyles while most of the population lives in poverty. The country ranks 172 out of 180 in the 2023 Corruption Perceptions Index by Transparency International.
The president’s other son, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, who is the vice president and heir apparent, was convicted in France in 2020 for embezzling public funds and laundering money to buy luxury assets. He was also involved in legal disputes with the United States and Switzerland over his ill-gotten wealth.
Despite the challenges, some activists and civil society groups in Equatorial Guinea continue to speak out and demand reforms. In 2019, the country endorsed the Safe Schools Declaration, an international commitment to protect education during armed conflict.
Source: Reuters
